


The Deal

by Ishti



Series: Rhenegade Spinoffs [2]
Category: Aveyond
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Post-Canon, Rhenegade Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 01:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15353190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishti/pseuds/Ishti
Summary: One hundred years apart. One hundred years together. That was the agreement. Sequel, part 2.





	The Deal

**Author's Note:**

> This one more or less holds up if you haven't read Rhenegade!

Across the expansive plateau above the Wildwood mountains, the rain roared like a fiend and fed the feral waterfalls carving the valley below. It wasn’t yet sundown. Te’ijal peeked out from under her full charcoal cloak, dangling her legs over the highest of the slippery cliffs to tempt the stark treetops two thousand feet below.

The footsteps she’d awaited for the past hour clanked to a halt behind her. A hundred years ago or so, she might’ve worried one of those feet would reach forward and kick her down the cliff--but he was a _perfect gentleman_ at all times, damn him.

“Galahad.”

She craned her neck to face him and attempted a thin smile. He did not return it. His irises were red.

“You’re here.”

He sighed. “Yes, wife, I am here.”

Te’ijal stood carefully beside him, pushing back her hood. “The fog is rising in the forest. We can take our time ‘outside’ if you wish.”

Galahad said nothing, and the nothing sounded like _thank you,_ so Te’ijal made for the pedestrian ladder. He followed. They descended.

“I cannot believe no new ramps or stairs have been erected in these mountains for one hundred years,” complained Galahad between huffs. “You can take neither horse nor cart down to the Wildwood. How--how do they trade?”

“This is not Thais,” remarked Te’ijal quietly.

“So it is not.”

The slippery ladder might’ve posed trouble for a traveler who wasn’t a vampire, but Te’ijal and Galahad reached the upper valley quickly enough even in the rain. He knew the way as well as she did, but Te’ijal led him through the crags.

“I have noticed something,” she said, as casual as could be.

“What is it?”

“You have fed.”

Galahad’s footsteps halted behind her. He leaned against a scrawny tree and sighed heavily.

“Yes, I have fed.”

“Not _maliciously,_ I would think.”

“Not intentionally at all. I was… in a fit.”

Te’ijal shook her head sympathetically. “You chose a dangerous path, dry and alone.”

“Well.” Galahad rubbed his forehead and met her eyes. “I, too, have noticed something.”

“What?”

“You are not happy to be here.”

Te’ijal froze in place as Galahad took to the path. Her face burned in the downpour.

“Shall we proceed, wife?”

The sky darkened as Te’ijal and her husband navigated the fog down to the forest. The silence warped in Te’ijal’s ears, filling her head and emptying it in waves. She tried to shake it out. Galahad turned his head to speak to her, but suddenly the tin drumming of rain against his pauldrons was all she could hear.

“--our deal.”

He looked at her expectantly.

“Oh, um… um, yes.” She nodded. That was probably the right answer.

“Good. I should briefly explain what I have done this past century. I did feed, as you noted. I entered a state of frenzy, and I could not stop myself. In my shame, I fled Thais to search for a cure.”

“A cure?” Te’ijal furrowed her brow. “A cure for what?”

“Vampirism.”

“Bah! But you _are_ a vampire. I am a vampire. I would never have been anything without being a vampire. You may as well search for the cure to… human-ism. Or spider-ism. Or crow-ism.”

“That is how it may be for _you,”_ grumbled Galahad, “but what may turn you unnaturally into a human would return me naturally to what I once was. Call it a ‘transformation of the body’ if you wish.”

Te’ijal sighed sharply through her nose, but said no more.

“I know now that I am a vampire, and that the vampire does not possess me,” continued Galahad. “In my search, I stumbled across small villages newly fashioned on the mainland in the wake of Ahriman’s defeat. Young families, aspiring farmers and merchants. Hopeful people.” Galahad closed his eyes for a moment, his voice cracking softly. “I broke them.”

“You… _broke_ them?”

Galahad clenched his jaw. “Almost as if I’d accepted defeat at the hand of the monster I thought lived within me, I _let it feed._ I felt powerless against it, trapped by a horror. I hurt people. I frightened children. I destroyed hope.”

“Galahad….”

“I let it happen until I could not anymore. I saw myself in the eyes of a child, a son of a village I’d ravaged the night before, and he saw me--the monster, _me._ He couldn’t bear me, nor could his mother, dying of the wounds I caused her. It was me.”

Te’ijal frowned. He should have come to Ghed’ahre, and she wished she’d pressed the issue--seeing him like this was… _strange._ No new vampire could suppress his brute thirst on his own. She was lucky she’d had Gyendal. But Galahad could have fought it if he’d stayed with her.

Or with any vampire, really, but it could have been her. This was _her_ fault.

“I did not find the cure,” admitted Galahad, “but I believe I came close. My discoveries may prove invaluable to--to other vampires, with the… will, and the opportunity, to become human.”

“Thank you for telling me.” Te’ijal made another attempt at a smile. “You--you truly have suffered these past years.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“And you?”

Te’ijal closed her eyes briefly, her feet finding their own places down the stone-carved stairs. Had she suffered? Yes, in a way. She’d suffered one hundred years of a rough downward plummet from the mesosphere as she unwittingly chased the scent of remorse. One hundred years apart, and now, another hundred living together as husband and wife--and she was lonely, so she spent her century in the realm of humans. She knew what humans _were_ now, having spent one hundred years slinking through their cities, working in their libraries and bars, keeping company in their homes on sunless afternoons. Speaking-- _listening._ She only drank what the witches gave her in exchange for the minerals and herbs she gathered topside. Not once did her fangs graze a human neck. Lars’ words still wrapped around her leg like a balloon string, anchoring her like she’d never been anchored in over five hundred years of shameless, indulgent carnage. For each life she’d ever ruined, then, she suffered in kind.

“I spent my time studying among humans,” she said. “I have learned much.”

Galahad grunted. “Apt.”

Te’ijal’s boots squished quietly into the untamed grass at the bottom of the cliff. She kept walking and didn’t look behind as her husband’s sabatons haphazardly met the muddy ground. It was too difficult to look into his eyes, his resolute eyes, and know that he would adhere to their deal no matter how much pain it caused him. She knew the thin lips, the flared nostrils, the low brow, and they were her fault. She couldn’t bear the shame.

_I can’t live with him like this._

“H-husband… you know….”

Te’ijal coughed. Galahad strode forward and matched her pace.

“...As these next hundred years were my half of the consideration, I suppose it would be my--my prerogative to terminate our contract--”

“Speak plainly.”

“I wish to release you from your obligation,” Te’ijal snapped, her nerves firing all at once. Galahad tripped over a rock hidden in the bare mud.

Te’ijal tried to calm her shuddering heart. She offered a hand to help Galahad, but he ignored it, rising to his slippery feet himself, so she pulled away and scratched the back of her head. Watery mud dripped by Galahad’s lips, and only then did he give his head a little shake, perhaps an involuntary twitch, to flick it away. He led his weight with his left hand. Had she noticed that before?

“You mean to say,” he repeated, “that you wish me not to stay with you in Ghed’ahre?”

Te’ijal bit her tongue and nodded. “That is what I wish.”

They stood in utter silence for what might have been another hundred years. Gusts of wind drove the rain through the conifers. Needles, blown haywire, stuck themselves in Te’ijal’s hair.

“Truly?” murmured Galahad.

“Yes.”

“Then…” Galahad looked away, brows knitted, confused and perhaps concerned. “I….”

Te’ijal crossed her arms against the sudden cold in her chest. “You should go.”

He just stood, absently running his dirty fingers through his short hair.

She sighed with a trace of irritation. _Oaf._ “You are welcome to stay if you _truly_ wish.”

He shook his head.

“Then… why stand here?”

She stared at him, his eyes downcast, and suddenly, she felt something akin to tenderness swimming upstream through her damned selfish disposition. She had learned the emotions of humans, the thoughts and fears they entertained, and he was… lost. Perhaps he’d gotten what he wanted, but he didn’t know what to do with it now that freedom was no longer an intangible pipe dream.

“What will you do, do you think?” she asked, a little softer.

Galahad cleared his throat. “I… will….”

But his intention didn’t manifest. Te’ijal stepped forward, stifling the old Te’ijal howling in her head. “Perhaps you will find the cure after all?”

_He doesn’t belong to me; he doesn’t belong to me._

He finally met her eyes. “Yes… yes. I might do that.”

She smiled as best she could. Her cheeks trembled.

_He will die._

“Please come back to visit me, Galahad.”


End file.
